Zionism

A Poem by Yehuda Amichai - All the Generations before Me

Students of biblical Hebrew benefit from reading poetry by Yehuda Amichai. The Hebrew of the poem presented below will be intelligible to anyone with an elementary grasp of
classical (biblical + rabbinic) Hebrew and at least a smattering of modern
Hebrew. Amichai's language is rich in biblical and rabbinic allusions. The translation I offer is
indebted to that of Harold Schimmel, but goes its own way on several occasions.

כל הדורות שלפני תרמו אותי

קמעה קמעה כדי שאוקם כאן בירושלים

בבת אחת, כמו בית תפילה או מוסד צדקה

זה מחייב. שמי הוא שם תורמי

זה מחייב.

All the
generations before me donated mebit by bit so
I might be erected here in Jerusalem

all at
once, like a house of prayer or a foundation for charity.It binds.
My name is my donors’ name.It binds.

אני מתקרב לגיל מות אבי.

צואתי מטלאת בהרבה טלאים,

אני צריך לשנות את חיי ואת מותי

יום יום כדי לקים את כל הנבואות

שניבאו אותי שלא יהיו שקר.

זה מחייב.

I am
approaching the age when my father died.My will is
patched with a surfeit of patches,I must
change my life and my deathday by day and
so fulfill all the propheciesthey
prophesied about me. So they do not become a lie.It binds.

עברתי את שנת הארבעים. יש

משרות שבהן לא יקבלו אותי

בשל כך. אלו הייתי באושויץ,

לא היו שולחים אותי לעבד,

היו שורפים אותי מיד.

זה מחייב.

I’ve passed
the age of forty. There arejobs for
which they will not take meon that
account. If I were in Auschwitz,they would
not have sent me out to labor,they would have
instantly fed me to the flames.It binds.

יהודה עמיחי

Yehuda
Amichai

The West runs the risk of becoming a “cut-flower” civilization. Its flower is the patient growth of the soil in which the plant
was
rooted for more than two millennia, yet violent forces have well-nigh
succeeded
in uprooting the plant and placing it in a vase filled with water
spiked with a chemical to maintain a false freshness. The apparent elixir of youth
works like magic. Yet it lasts but a day. Then the flower will die.

Jacques Ellul, a French philosopher, spoke of the forces of cultural self-hatred, and the
intellectual stance that cheers them on, as Trahison de l'Occident
“betrayal
of the West.” On the other side, it is undeniable that apologists
of tradition have given tradition a bad name. The result is the
following: today the one
who claims that the cultural edifice on which the West was
built, from
Socrates to Seneca, from Moses to Moses, from Genesis to Revelation,
from Homer
to Dante, from Aristophanes to Shakespeare, from Philo to Kant, is like
solid
rock, in comparison to which all other ground is shifting sand, seems
like a
voice crying in the wilderness.

Western tradition is forward-looking by nature; biblical tradition
in particular has an eschatological focus. In the Bible, Zion is over and over
again the locus of fulfillment of the most exalted promises. For good reason, one
passage, Isaiah 2:2-4, rings a bell with almost every literate person. Others, like
Isa 35:1-11 and 40:1-11, describe a return to Zion, have impressed themselves
on the consciousness of generations of believers, and led eventually to the
re-establishment of the Jewish people in that very place. Psalms 46 and 48 are
among the most beloved celebrations of a place of cult in all of world
literature.

The contrast, then, between Jerusalem as we know it and Jerusalem as we
wish it sears the heart like a hot iron. The fundamental structure of this
experience, sometimes referred to as cognitive dissonance, is typical of life and
of religious life in particular. It is not just about ideas. It is about people
who brought us to where we are. The poem by Yehuda Amichai presented above is comprehensible to Jews and Christians alike – for that matter, by all human
beings – and connected without difficulty to like examples of cognitive
dissonance at the intersection of history and individual experience.

Vocalized Text

כָּל־הַדּוֹרוֹת שֶׁלְּפַָנַי תָּרְמוּ אוֹתִי

קִמְעָה קִמְעָה כְּדֵי שֶׁאוּקַם כָּאן בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם

בְּבַת אַחַת, כְּמוֹ בֵּית תְּפִלָּה אוֹ מוּסַד צְדָקָה

זֶה מְחַיֵּב. שְׁמִי הוּא שֵׁם תּוֹרְמַי.

זֶה מְחַיֵּב.

All the
generations before me donated mebit by bit
so I might be erected here in Jerusalemall at
once, like a house of prayer or a foundation for charity.It binds.
My name is my donors’ name.It binds.

אֲנִי מִתְקָרֵב לְגִיל מוֹת אָבִי.

צַוָּאתִי מֻטְלֵאת בְּהַרְבֵּה טְלָאִים,

אֲנִי צָרִיךְ לְשַׁנּוֹת אֶת־חַיַּי וְאֶת מוֹתִי

יוֹם יוֹם כְּדֵי לְקַיֵּם אֶת־כָּל־הַנְּבוּאוֹת

שֶׁנִּבְּאוּ אוֹתִי שֶׁלֹּא יִהְיוּ שֶׁקֶר.

זֶה מְחַיֵּב.

I am
approaching the age when my father died.My will is
patched with a surfeit of patches,I must
change my life and my deathday by day
and so fulfill all the propheciesthey
prophesied about me. So they do not become a lie.It binds.

עָבַרְתִּי אֶת־שְׁנַת הָאַרְבָּעִים. יֵשׁ

מִשְׂרוֹת שֶׁבָּהֶן לֹא יְקַבְּלוּ אוֹתִי

בְּשֶׁל כָּךְ. אִלּוּ הָיִיתִי בְּאוֹשְׁוִיץ,

לֹא הָיוּ שׁוֹלְחִים אוֹתִי לַעֲבֹד,

הָיוּ שׂוֹרְפִים אוֹתִי מִיָּד.

זֶה מְחַיֵּב.

I’ve passed
the age of forty. There arejobs for
which they will not take meon that
account. If I were in Auschwitz,they would
not have sent me out to labor,they would
have instantly fed me to the flames.It binds.

יְהוּדָה עַמִּיחַי

For other poems by Amichai in Hebrew and in translation, see Yehuda Amichai, Poems of Jerusalem and Love
Poems, A Bilingual Edition (Riverdale-on-Hudson: Sheep Meadow Press, 1992). Harold
Schimmel’s translation
of the poem above is on p. 3.

NOTE: per Soren's observation in the comments, I changed my original translation, "the anniversary of my father's death," to "the age my father died."

Thank you so much. :-) I'm afraid except for living here or studying Kierkegaard, there are few obvious reasons to most people for learning Danish. After all, there are so many other languages of tackle.

The word for anniverary (of someone's death) I've heard most often in Israel, I think, is the Yiddish loanword "yohrzeit", but of course that's very much equivalent to yom ha-shanah.

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